Surgery and portal hypertension
Child, C.G.; Turcotte, J.G.
Major Problems in Clinical Surgery 1: 1-85
1964
ISSN/ISBN: 0025-1062 PMID: 4950264 Document Number: 5813
Renaissance of interest in the liver and its vessels in health and disease appeared in the Spleen Clinic of the Columbia University—Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. There, in 1937, Dr. Allen O. Whipple and his associates measured splenic venous pressure in numerous patients with splenomegaly. Portal and splenic hypertension was verified in patients with thrombosis of the portal vein and in patients with cirrhosis of the liver. In many of these unfortunate individuals massive, recurrent and often fatal hematemeses were identified as catastrophic clinical phenomena. In 1945 Doctor Whipple reintroduced Ecles fistula to clinical surgery for treatment of this complication of portal hypertension in man. He and Doctor Blakemore in New York and Doctor Linton in Boston soon proved that decompression of the hypertensive portal system into the renal vein or vena cava was a logical surgical operation for prevention of recurrent variceal hemorrhage.
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